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Friday, October 15, 2010

Meet Mandi!!

Happy Friday and thank you for all of the positive words about my Fall Slaw and inquiries into what is happening to the blog. I have been blogging now at Itzy’s Kitchen for over 2 1/2 years! I have enjoyed sharing recipes, making friends with like minded foodies, and learning about new products I would have never heard about were it not for blogging. I’ve also really liked sharing a little bit of my life with each and every one of you. However, things have been a little hectic lately. Between work, teaching group fitness classes, keeping up the house and spending time with my wonderful husband, bulldog, friends & family….I haven’t been able to blog as much as I’d like. Enter Mandi….

When Josh and I first moved to South Carolina, we went to dinner with a guy he was working with, Bryan, and his wife, Mandi. I knew Josh thought Bryan was a very cool dude and was worried that I’d be stuck all night talking to his wife who I had nothing in common with (come on now, we’ve all been there). Boy, was I wrong!

Mandi was SO much fun and we had a million things in common…including our love of food in general, cooking & baking. We also are both tiny with ginormous husbands:

Mandi is a fabulous foodie and a great baker. She has been lurking on blogs for a while now and its about time this lady starts sharing her goodness with the blog world! Mandi will now be the second half (and maybe better half ;)) of Itzy’s Kitchen!

So give her a big welcome!!! We will kick things off this weekend with some rocking Oktoberfest recipes (ok…we’re a little behind the ball on this one). What probing questions do you have for Ms. Mandi???

Love it! Mandi, what's your go-to dinner when you want something healthy but easy? Do you always have the ingredients on hand? I love to get people's lists of what they ALWAYS have in their cabinet. Like, we always have arborio rice and canned mushroom for a quick risotto.

Stephanie - that is a great question! I always seem to have a bottle of barbeque sauce, chicken, short grain brown rice, and vegetables of some sort. My fave go-to recipe is actually my mom's crockpot barbeque chicken, it is SO simple (as long as you think about it ahead of time of course!):32 oz. bottle of bbq sauce4 oz. Coke4 bay leaves1 large onion, chopped4-6 chicken breastsDump all ingredients in the crockpot and cook on low 8-10 hours. So tasty and tender! I always usually serve with short grain brown rice and some roasted veggies - I love roasting veggies - usually cut up some squash, zucchini, onion, or whatever is on hand at the time and season up with some EVOO, s&p, some thyme, rosemary and pop em in the oven!